Jesus is Sensational!

I would imagine it’s pretty easy to come to agreement about the statement that Jesus is sensational. After all, he was raised from the dead. His teachings have been followed by billions of people for nearly two thousand years. Several libraries of books about him have been written. More speeches have been devoted to him than any other figure in history. That’s some pretty sensational stuff. You can’t really understand the history of western civilization without understanding the role this simple carpenter’s son has played in the development of government, law, economics, art, literature, and music, not to mention acts of charity and creativity as we as violence, and savagery. You don’t have to believe he is the Son of God, fully human, fully divine, and all that doctrinal stuff, to admit that he’s got a pretty high profile. But none of that is why Jesus is truly sensational.

No, that my friends, is because Jesus of Nazareth, the author of salvation, the pioneer and perfecter of faith, the king of kings, the Lord of Lords, the crucified and risen one, loved a good snack. It says it right there in our Gospel reading: “While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, ‘Dudes, got anything here to eat?’ They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence.” Yes, the Savior of all humankind stops in the middle of explaining God’s divine plan and purpose so he can grab a bite to eat. I guess the menu options in the tomb and down there in Hades were pretty limited. And if that weren’t awesome enough, he’s a mooch! The guy who created heaven and earth, who could whip up something truly tasty just by snapping his fingers, begs a piece of fish off of his friends. Yes, Jesus is truly sensational.

What has no eyes, ears, tongue, fingertips, or nose, but senses all? If you think the answer is God, you’re close. It’s actually your brain. Your brain does all that sensing, and then makes sense of it too. Without the brain processing the data coming in through your eyes, it’s just waves or particles of light. Without the brain processing the data coming in through your ears, it’s just air vibrating on your eardrums. Of course, the brain needs those sense receptors found in each of those body parts before it can give meaning to the world around you. But God has given us brains to let the natural phenomena say something to us. And what the brains of the disciples were taking in when they saw the risen Jesus reaching out for something to eat, when they felt that fish in their hands as they passed it over to him, when they heard it crunch while he was chewing it, and maybe even when they could smell it on his breath, was that this man they had seen hanging on a cross, and heard saying, “It is finished,” and smelled beginning to decay, and touched as they wrapped him in linen cloths and laid him in a new tomb, was alive and well and standing before them. Yes, Jesus is sensational, because he uses our five senses to proclaim that God has defeated death.

Helen Keller, someone who knew a little something about sensory deprivation, having been both blind and deaf, once wrote that, “Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived. The odors of fruits waft me to my southern home, to my childhood frolics in the peach orchard. Other odors, instantaneous and fleeting, cause my heart to dilate joyously or contract with remembered grief. Even as I think of smells, my nose is full of scents that start awake sweet memories of summers gone and ripening fields far away.” Yes, Helen Keller knew that our senses connect us to our experiences, good, bad, and ugly. They let us know if we are in danger or if we are safe, if we are among friends or enemies. They help us orient ourselves to our surroundings, to our history, to our needs. You know what it’s like to be real hangry? You know, so hungry that you get grouchy? Well, for me, hungry becomes hangry when I smell something really great that I know I can’t have just then. It’s one of my senses triggering me, telling me something. Our senses are so very important for our surviving and our thriving.

Jesus was sensational since birth, wasn’t he, that baby wrapped by his parents in swaddling clothes, held in their arms, laid in a manger? Those three kings brought their gold, frankincense and myrrh, things that delight the senses. He sweated as a carpenter’s son, walked miles in the Galilean desert, touched unclean people’s bodies, smeared mud on their eyes, heard them calling his name from the side of the road, smelled the stink of Lazarus in his tomb, saw lepers keep their distance, tasted bread broken with his disciples. And that real life, that incarnation, that God made flesh, himself endowed with senses he used among them, was what connected him with the people around him. He was one of them. Their senses told them so. He was no ghost, no apparition, no sheep in wolf’s clothing. He was the real deal, a guy who could mooch off his friends for a snack, and turn around and drive a demon out of someone. Not only did his followers see the incarnation, the humanity, but they saw the miracles, the compassion, the integrity, that divine stuff, and their brains made meaning of what their five senses received.

And Jesus knows that the disciples need that sensory experience when he comes back from the dead too. Maybe even more than before. After all, they’d seen rabbis come and go, but they’d never seen the dead raised. And so he lets them touch him, and he eats in front of them, and he helps them reconnect with him as he opens their minds to understand the Scriptures and to prepare them for what comes next: that repentance and forgiveness of sins are to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. Yes, he uses their senses to reach their hearts and minds, because that’s how we learn, by taking it all in, and letting our God-given brains sort it all out. Yes, Jesus is truly sensational.

So we’re in this season of resurrection when we celebrate the very real risen Jesus who has come promising us abundant life. It’s the season to celebrate his first century resurrected body, yes, but also the body he has bequeathed to us upon his ascension to God’s right hand, his own body we call the church. We are now his body in the world, called now to do what he did then. And so this season of resurrection is the perfect time to remember how sensational we are now as his body, and to claim the charge he has placed upon us. It’s a big job, this proclamation of repentance and forgiveness in his name to all nations. We’re gonna need a snack for the journey don't you think. Wait, what’s that I smell? Leftover donuts from the Happy Place. OK, now I’m getting hangry. Y’all got anything here to eat?

If you’ve followed any of the religious surveys done in the United States over the last few years, you know that although a lot of people say they believe in God, fewer and fewer people are going to church. This growing group has been called the Nones, because they mark “none” when asked their religious preference or affiliation. They say they are spiritual, but not religious. They cite the church’s hypocrisy, and claim that it doesn’t accurately depict the Jesus they’ve all heard about, the one who changed the course of Western civilization, the one with all those libraries and speeches to his credit. They say we don’t practice what we preach. And maybe they’ve got a point. Libraries and speeches didn’t get Jesus very far, did they? Mere words didn’t connect him with the masses. He didn’t only talk about spiritual matters, he got down and dirty to teach about spiritual matters. He wasn’t a ghost. He was a mooch. He was sensational.

The Nones want good news as much as anyone else. They hear the same bad news we do. They have the same aspirations we do. They want abundant life too. We can’t just put their absence down to bad parenting or the influence of school sports on Sunday or violent video games. Maybe their absence has something to do with what their eyes, ears, tongues, fingertips and noses are, or aren’t, perceiving as they make their way through the world. Maybe what they’re not seeing, hearing, tasting, touching and smelling is the body of Jesus Christ moving among them. Are we really with them in their lives, filling their senses with what abundant life looks like, sounds like, tastes like, smells like, feels like? How sensational is our witness? Have we mooched a little fish off of anybody lately?

As much as the Nones, or the nations as the Bible calls them, need to use their senses to perceive Christ’s body in the world, Christ’s body needs to use its senses too. That’s where Jesus started, right? He took it all in and let his divine mind figure out how to share what the kingdom of God was all about. In his parables, in his stories, in his examples, he was always using the sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and touches familiar to his people. And when we can do that, we’ll be better able to share ourselves with those in search of good news, and healing, and forgiveness. So, let’s be a sensational church and,

Let us hear the cries of the lonely and the forsaken, the abused and the heartbroken, and take heed, bringing their voices to the halls of justice;

Let us see the malnutrition and neglect of those affected by famine and make others see until every hungry person is fed;

Let us smell the stench of poverty and pollution, poison and pestilence until we can no longer stand it. and we make it stop;

Let us taste the bitter tears and the brackish water of communities pushed to the margins by our society’s pursuit of wealth, and open up the floodgates of hope and healing instead;

Let us touch old, papery skin and thin, aged hair as we make all our elderly and infirm comfortable and cared for.

Friends, we are no more ghosts than Jesus Christ was a ghost. Spiritual beings, yes, but not ghosts. We are his body. We are his heart, his hands, and his voice. Let us be as sensational as we can be, so that we may bring the same good news to our friends that he brought to his friends when he asked them, “Have you anything here to eat?” Amen.

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